Description
Book SynopsisFor more than a century, American communities erected monuments to western pioneers. The images they depict enshrine prevailing notions of American exceptionalism, race relations, and gender identity. This book is the first delve into the long and complex history of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering pioneer monuments.
Trade ReviewTouching on themes ranging from settler colonialism to heritage tourism, Cynthia Culver Prescott's engaging study relates these monuments to the core beliefs they embodied, such as manifest destiny and American exceptionalism, and explains how gendered narratives of white motherhood helped build and reproduce modern American views of the ideal family."" - Erika Doss, author of
Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America|""In
Pioneer Mother Monuments, Cynthia Culver Prescott uncovers a long history of debates, silences, and responses to pioneer commemoration, reflecting shifting desires and anxieties prevalent in American culture and mirroring broader historical and art historical trends."" - Alison Fields, author of
Picher, Oklahoma: Catastrophe, Memory, and Trauma""An innovative and groundbreaking study,
Pioneer Mother Monuments weaves race, gender, and public memory together and challenges readers to rethink the place of pioneer monuments in our communal landscape. Prescott makes a compelling case for understanding these monuments as visible elements of the nation's settler colonial history."" - Abigail Markwyn, author of
Empress San Francisco: The Pacific Rim, the Great West, and California at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
